A friend recently asked me this question:

What would you recommend in terms of the best book(s) to learn about Agile (Scrum) with XP practices? That is, if you had a team of developers who were newbies to Agile, Scrum, and XP, what books/articles would you give them to bring them up to speed on what they should be doing and how they should be doing it?

This question from my friend is a very tricky one, in that it is very broad and generic, and my friend gave me no extra team or organizational context to go on, so about all I can do is give a generic answer, and that is what I’ve done below. If you’re looking to combine Scrum with XP practices, be sure and see Kniberg’s book under “Scrum” below.

Don’t have time to read all of these? Well then, read the first couple from each category, and then continue working your way down each list.

8 Responses

So many books are “how to” but Agile is more of a way of thinking about doing. That’s why I love Alistair Cockburn’s “Agile Software Development.” If you understand it, then you understand the whys of the various methods and how you can bend them to fit your needs.
Agile is a means to an end, not an end.

While I agree that understanding the “Agile why?” is awesome, I wouldn’t recommend any book by Alistair to beginners(based on the 3 that I’ve read). To me, most of his books are written at the Ha-Ri level.

Hello Charles, thanks for providing a link to Lawrence’s “Patterns for Splitting User Stories” i notice that he also has a post titled New Story Splitting Resource, i look forward to reading both of them later today.

Hi Charles,
thanks for the nice structured list – I fully agree with your recommendations. Some books are now added to my book-backlog ;-)

Some books I recently read and I would add to your list are:
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“Management 3.0″ – Jurgen Appelo – long missing link for the management in agile environments
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“Drive” and “Non-Violent Communication” and “Where good ideas come from” – really nice books to cover the topic motivation.
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“Tribal leadership” – to understand how your organization works and what could be a final goal with your agile transformation.

Maybe these books are interesting for you too – for some of them you can find some book notes to scan on my blog.

I was actually one of the reviewers on that book and Ilan’s work is outstanding. The book changed a fair amount before it was published, and I want to take a closer look at the final product before I put it on the list. I also plan to do a short review of the book as well. Just having trouble finding time for that!